Feb. 28 2001—The Legal Services Corporation Act of 1974 created a federal subsidy program that provides financial support for legal assistance to the poor in noncriminal matters. To keep the program from being used for political purposes, Congress has tightly regulated the use of LSC funds. One funding restriction, added in 1996, withheld LSC funds from entities that took part, on either side, in litigation to reform welfare.

In Legal Services Corp. v. Velasquez, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, rules (in an opinion by Justice Kennedy, joined by Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer) that the 1996 funding restriction violates the First Amendment. Justice Scalia, in dissent (joined by Rehnquist, O’Connor, and Thomas), explains that the case is “embarrassingly simple: The LSC subsidy neither prevents anyone from speaking nor coerces anyone to change speech, and is indistinguishable in all relevant respects from the subsidy upheld in [the Court’s 1991 ruling in] Rust v. Sullivan.”

Feb. 29 1892—“It is a familiar rule that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute because not within its spirit nor within the intention of its makers.” A unanimous Supreme Court declares this spirit-of-the-law canon of nontextualism in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, as it holds that a federal law barring anyone from assisting or encouraging the importation of an alien by entering into a contract in advance with the alien “to perform labor or service of any kind in the United States” did not apply to a contract by which a church in New York contracted with E. Walpole Warren, an alien residing in England, to become its pastor.

The Court acknowledges that the law, in spelling out specific exceptions for professional actors, artists, lecturers, singers, and domestic servants, “strengthens the idea that every other kind of labor and service was intended to be reached.” But its examination of legislative history leads it to assert that “the intent of Congress was simply to stay the influx of … cheap unskilled labor.”

1998—In Brause v. Bureau of Vital Statistics, Anchorage trial judge Peter A. Michalski rules that Alaska’s statutory definition of marriage as between “one man and one woman” violates the state constitution unless Alaska can show a “compelling state interest” in support of its definition. In November 1998, Alaska voters approve, by a 68% to 32% margin, a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

1992—Justice Thomas’s dissenting opinion in Hudson v. McMillian—four months into his service on the Court—produces a spasm of confused outrage from the Left. As Thomas explains in the opening of his dissent, the sole issue before the Court is a legal one: Must a prisoner alleging that he has suffered “cruel and unusual punishment” establish that he has suffered a significant injury? The court below had found the prisoner’s injuries to be “minor,” and that factual determination was not under review by the Court. Addressing the legal question, Thomas reads the Court’s precedents as requiring showing of a significant injury, and he abides by that view. He also declares: “Abusive behavior by prison guards is deplorable conduct that properly evokes outrage and contempt. But that does not mean that it is invariably unconstitutional. The Eighth Amendment is not, and should not be turned into, a National Code of Prison Regulation.” Thomas further notes that the prisoner had state-law remedies available and, if those remedies were not adequate, a federal due-process claim.

The next day, this hitherto obscure case is featured in the lead article on the front page of the New York Times. Linda Greenhouse’s article highlights the injuries suffered by the prisoner, but fails to mention that the lower court’s finding that the injuries were minor was not under review by the Court. She also quotes extravagant language from Justice O’Connor’s majority opinion that, responding to Thomas’s position that the same legal standard should govern both excessive-force and conditions-of-confinement claims under the Eighth Amendment, falsely implies that Thomas denies the factual “difference between punching a prisoner in the face and serving him unappetizing food.” Greenhouse juxtaposes Thomas’s dissent with his confirmation testimony about his compassion. She also highlights a supposed “close alliance” between Thomas and Scalia.

One day later, a New York Times editorial, viciously titled “The Youngest, Cruelest Justice,” falsely asserts that Thomas’s dissent “contended that since the prisoner suffered only a split lip, loosened teeth, and a broken dental plate, he had no constitutional complaint.” The editorial feigns “crashing disappointment” with him. Happily, unlike others subjected to the gaseous pollutants of the Greenhouse effect, Thomas remains unaffected.

2010—President Obama nominates Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to a Ninth Circuit seat. With his volatile mix of aggressive ideology and raw inexperience, the 39-year-old Liu is that rare nominee who threatens to make the laughingstock Ninth Circuit even more ridiculous. Liu openly embraces a freewheeling constitutional approach that yields a plethora of extreme left-wing results: among them, support for the invention of a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage, pervasive and perpetual racial quotas, and judicial imposition (usually in an “interstitial” role) of an array of rights to social “welfare” goods, including education, shelter, subsistence, and health care.

In May 2011, Liu will abandon his Ninth Circuit nomination after Democrat Ben Nelson joins Senate Republicans in defeating a cloture vote. But later that year, California governor Jerry Brown will appoint Liu to the California supreme court. Liu follows in the line of three aggressive liberal activists whom Brown appointed to the state supreme court during his first stint as governor three decades ago, Rose Bird, Cruz Reynoso, and Joseph Grodin (all of whom were ousted by voters in their 1986 retention election).

2016—At a mock hearing meant to pressure Senate Republicans to confirm whomever President Obama will nominate to the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Scalia’s death, law professor Geoffrey Stone panders to Senate Democrats by purporting to discern a practice under which “the Senate always defers to the president as long as the president puts forth nominees who are clearly qualified and who are reasonably moderate in their views.” Stone specifically cites Justice Samuel Alito as one such nominee.

This is the same Stone who in 2006 urged the Senate to defeat the Alito nomination. Back then, Stone emphasized that “members of the Senate are free to reject nominees if they disagree with [the] views” the nominating president “wants represented on the Court.” Stone further argued: “If the circumstances in the country or on the Court make the confirmation of a particular nominee especially troubling, senators are likely to give less deference to the president’s choices, and that is perfectly appropriate. That is how the process has worked historically, and it is how it should work.” (Stone’s emphasis.)

2017—Playing pronoun police, the Supreme Court’s Office of the Clerk chastises two amici for using a feminine pronoun (“G.G., by her next friend and mother, Deirdre Grimm”) to refer to the respondent in the caption of their briefs. Never mind that the respondent is a biological female and that a central question in the case is whether she must nonetheless be treated as though she were male. Never mind, further, that the rule that the clerk’s office alleges amici to have violated doesn’t remotely say what the clerk’s office claims the rule to mean (namely, that “parties generally should use the case title reflected on the Court’s docket”) and that the clerk’s office hasn’t previously enforced such a meaning.

1993—When is a quota not a quota? The St. Petersburg Times reports that Florida chief justice Rosemary Barkett, a member of the Florida Commission on the Status of Women, defends a commission report that recommends passage of legislation requiring that all of Florida’s decisionmaking boards and commissions be half male and half female by 1998. Barkett explains: “It is not in the context of a quota system. It is simply an acknowledgment that women make up one-half of the population of this state.” Oh.

Impressed by her willingness and ability to deny the obvious, President Clinton months later nominates Barkett to an Eleventh Circuit seat.

2009—In an effort to bamboozle Republican senators and advance her own prospects for a Supreme Court nomination, Solicitor General nominee Elena Kagan submits evasive responses to post-hearing questions. For example, in response to the question, “Do you believe that there is a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage?,” Kagan states, “There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.” Only in a further follow-up exchange does she make clear that she is not conveying her own view as to how the Constitution is best read on this matter but is merely stating that no such right has yet been generally recognized. Or, as she puts it in her academic gobbledygook:

I meant for this statement to bear its natural meaning. [sic!] Constitutional rights are a product of constitutional text as interpreted by courts and understood by the nation’s citizenry and its elected representatives. By this measure, which is the best measure I know for determining whether a constitutional right exists, there is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Kagan’s ruse nonetheless snookers the mainstream media: Upon her nomination to the Supreme Court a year later, various major newspapers leave their readers thinking that Kagan is on record against inventing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

1994—Justice Blackmun’s law clerks, perhaps concerned that he is falling behind on his citechecking responsibilities, melodramatically announce (in a dissent from denial of certiorari in Callins v. Collins) that he “no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.” No, he’s not abandoning his lawless abortion jurisprudence. Rather, he is announcing that he will henceforth—in the few remaining months of his 24-year career on the Court—regard the death penalty as unconstitutional.

According to liberal legal scholar David J. Garrow (in this essay), Blackmun’s records show, “especially after 1990, … a scandalous abdication of judicial responsibility.” Among other things, “his clerks were almost wholly responsible for his famous denunciation of capital punishment” in Callins. One memo from a clerk to Blackmun regarding a new draft of the Callins opinion encapsulates the role reversal: “I have not altered any of the cites. It is therefore unnecessary for you to recheck the cites for accuracy.”

2017—Defying the Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment ruling in Heller v. District of Columbia (2008), the en banc Fourth Circuit rules by a 10-to-4 vote (in Kolbe v. Hogan) that Maryland’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines is constitutionally permissible. (Read Charles Cooke and David French for extensive critiques of the Fourth Circuit’s evasions and errors.)

1980—Justices Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens dissent from Justice White’s majority opinion in Committee for Public Education v. Regan, which rules constitutionally permissible a New York statute authorizing the use of public funds to reimburse private schools (both religious and secular) for performing various testing and reporting services mandated by state law. The dissenters would have permitted a statute that provided such aid only to secular private schools, but imagined that the inclusion of nondiscriminatory support for state-mandated costs incurred by private religious schools violated the Establishment Clause. Blackmun laments “a long step backwards,” and Stevens calls for “resurrect[ion]” of the mythical “wall” of separation. (For more on the “wall” myth, see This Day entry for February 10, 1947.)

1972—In a Brennanesque opinion in People v. Anderson, the California supreme court, by a 6-1 vote, misconstrues the state constitution’s prohibition on cruel or unusual punishment to reflect “contemporary standards of decency” and rules that the death penalty violates what it imagines contemporary standards to be. All pending death sentences, including those of Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, are voided. Nine months later, the people of California, expressing actual contemporary standards, override the ruling by voting overwhelmingly to amend the state constitution to authorize the death penalty.

1964—In Wesberry v. Sanders, the Supreme Court somehow extracts from the provision in Article I, section 2 that members of the House of Representatives be chosen “by the People of the several States” a supposed mandate that congressional districts in each state have, as nearly as practicable, equal populations.

In dissent, Justice Harlan lambastes the majority opinion as “unsound logically on its face, and demonstrably unsound historically.” He explains that Article I, section 4 confers on each state “plenary power to select their allotted Representatives in accordance with any method of popular elections they please, subject only to the supervisory power of Congress.” He closes by observing that the Constitution “does not confer on the Court blanket authority to step into every situation where the political branch may be thought to have fallen short,” and by warning that the Court’s “stability” depends “not only on its being alert to keep the other branches of government within constitutional bounds, but equally upon recognition of the limitations on the Court’s own functions in the constitutional system.”

2016—Harry Reid, D-Fantasyland. In an op-ed in the Washington Post opposing the Senate Republican strategy to keep open through the November 2016 elections the Supreme Court vacancy resulting from Justice Scalia’s death, Democratic leader Reid claims that Senate Democrats “always guaranteed Supreme Court nominees a fair hearing and a floor vote.”

Yes, believe it or not, that’s the same Reid who, as Senate minority leader in 2006, voted to support an attempt to filibuster the nomination of Justice Alito (and thus prevent a floor vote). That filibuster attempt won the support of 25 Democratic senators (a majority of the caucus), including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Patrick Leahy, Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin.

On Monday, the White House rolled out its eleventh wave of judicial nominees. As Carrie noted earlier this week, the latest slate of nominees continues the Administration’s established practice of selecting highly qualified, conservative nominees for the federal appellate bench. Although there have been a few hiccups, the Trump Administration’s overall record on judicial nominations remains stellar — and much better than some of us anticipated.

One thing that’s particularly interesting about the latest slate of nominees is that it includes three picks for the circuit courts of appeals from states with two Democratic Senators — Mark Bennett from Hawaii for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Michael Scudder and Judge Amy St. Eve of Illinois for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Even more interesting is the fact that all three of these nominees have been endorsed by their home-state Senators. Hawaii Senators Hirono and Schatz praised the Bennett pick, and Illinois Senators Durbin and Duckworth praised the Scudder and St. Eve picks. What’s going on?

A cynic might suspect that the Democratic support for Trump’s latest nominees reflects that the Administration has turned away from picking conservative nominees, but that’s not the case. The latest nominees are in line with prior appellate nominees from states with Democratic Senators — including David Stras (Eighth Circuit), Joan Larsen (Sixth Circuit), and Joel Carson (Tenth Circuit), just to name a few. They are highly qualified, able jurists that are hard for home-state Senators to oppose on the merits.

These nominations are also the product of good faith consultation between the White House and Senate offices. Contrary to some suggestions in the press, the White House is not refusing to consult with Democratic Senators on judicial nominations. To the contrary, it is actively seeking good-faith input from home state Senators of both parties.

This is worth keeping in mind when one considers that there remain a significant number of appellate vacancies in states with one or two Democratic Senators, including California, Ohio, and New York, some of which have been designated judicial emergencies. It may also explain why, if nominees for some of the seats are eventually forthcoming, Senator Grassley might ignore the lack of a blue slip from particularly intransigent Senators.

The latest nominations show — perhaps surprisingly — that the White House is willing to consult with Senate Democrats on judicial nominations in good faith. Insofar as some Senators are unwilling to play along, I suspect there is a limit to how long this will be allowed to hold up the process. Eventually the White House will tire of waiting for good-faith consultation that never comes, and I doubt Senator Grassley will allow intransigent Senators to use blue slips to block highly qualified nominees.

2008—In Ricci v. DeStefano, a Second Circuit panel that includes Judge Sonia Sotomayor buries the claims of 19 white firefighters and one Hispanic firefighter that New Haven city officials engaged in racially discriminatory practices by throwing out the results of two promotional exams.

As Judge José Cabranes, Sotomayor’s fellow Clinton appointee, later puts it in his blistering dissent from denial of en banc rehearing, even though the case presented “significant constitutional and statutory claims of first impression,” the parties “submitted briefs of eighty-six pages each and a six-volume joint appendix of over 1,800 pages,” and oral argument “lasted over an hour (an unusually long argument in the practice of our Circuit),” the panel somehow “affirmed the District Court’s ruling in a summary order containing a single substantive paragraph”—which Cabranes quotes in full and which gives the reader virtually no sense of what the case is about.

Cabranes’s opinion expresses his “hope that the Supreme Court will resolve the issues of great significance raised by this case” and his judgment that plaintiffs’ claims are “worthy of [Supreme Court] review.” Cabranes’s hope is fulfilled, as the Court grants review of the panel ruling and, in June 2009, reverses it.

2017—In a majority opinion written by Judge Karen Nelson Moore and joined by Judge Jane Stranch, a divided Sixth Circuit panel rules (in Bormuth v. County of Jackson) that a county board of commissioners’ practice of beginning its monthly meetings with a prayer violates the Establishment Clause. In dissent, Judge Richard Griffin will object that the practice of legislative prayer dates back to the founding of the Republic and that the Supreme Court has twice held that it does not violate the Establishment Clause.

Five months later, the en banc Sixth Circuit will reject the panel ruling by a vote of 9 to 6.

Bishop Paprocki’s repudiation of the USCCB’s amicus brief in Janus v. AFSCME ought to make clear to the National Catholic Reporter’s Michael Sean Winters why he shouldn’t have been “gobsmacked” by my critique of that brief. At the risk of overkill, let me address Winters’s other comments contesting my initial post.

Winters claims that the USCCB brief “is so obviously in a long line of explicit church teaching.” But as I explained, today’s public-sector unions are enemies of important Catholic causes. That sad reality, which Winters does not address or dispute, must be factored into the prudential judgment that any reasonable person would make about coerced union fees. Indeed, “a long line of explicit church teaching” makes this clear. In Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII warned Catholic workers not to join unions that “are managed on principles ill-according with Christianity and the public well-being,” and he insisted that “working men’s associations” must “look first and before all things to God” and “must pay special and chief attention to the duties of religion and morality.” In Populorum Progressio, Pope Paul VI emphasized that unions forfeit the justification for their existence when they adopt “a materialistic and atheistic philosophy” that “shows no respect for a religious outlook on life, for freedom or human dignity.”

Winters faults me for not treating earlier statements of staff bureaucrats as the positions of American bishops. I recognize that the bishops have (unwisely, in my judgment) often delegated to unsupervised or poorly supervised staffers the authority to speak on their behalf. But I don’t accept the often highly implausible fiction that statements made by those staffers in fact reflect the considered positions of the bishops. Bishop Paprocki’s statement shows that I am right to reject this fiction.

Winters also tries to use against me my punctiliousness and transparency in making even minor changes to my posts. With the snarky advice to me to “Get a new research team!,” Winters claims at the outset of his comments that my post has “corrections [plural] in the body of the text” and that a second post of mine “explain[s] an additional correction.” In my initial post, I made a single change, eliminating a one-sentence “Indeed” point. My second post illustrated that the USCCB amicus brief had caused “the dangerous misperception that [the USCCB] considers right-to-work laws in the public sector to violate Catholic social teaching as severely as laws imposing abortion and same-sex marriage do.” I merely noted in one bracketed sentence that I had tweaked a passage to soften a criticism. I look forward to Winters’s many needed corrections to his comments.

In a post last week, I explained why I found the amicus brief submitted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in the soon-to-be-argued case of Janus v. AFSCME to be badly misguided in important ways. A statement issued yesterday by Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the diocese of Springfield, Illinois—the epicenter of the dispute in Janus—forcefully confirms my critique.

In his statement, Bishop Paprocki repudiates the USCCB’s amicus brief. Contrary to the “public perception” generated by news articles, he explains, the brief does not set forth “the position adopted by the bishops of the United States,” as “no vote was taken on whether to file such a brief.” Bishop Paprocki also disputes the brief’s account of Catholic social doctrine: “While church teaching clearly supports freedom of association and the right to form and join a union, it does not mandate coercing people to join a union or pay dues against their will.” More broadly, whether or not to support “right to work” laws “is a matter of prudential judgment on which reasonable people can disagree as to whether the rights of association and free speech are helped or hindered by mandatory union dues.”

In comments yesterday contesting my post, Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter declared himself “gobsmacked to see [me] suggesting the staff at the U.S. bishops’ conference ran amok on this brief when it is so obviously in a long line of explicit church teaching.” Bishop Paprocki’s statement shows that the USCCB bureaucrats indeed “ran amok on this brief.” Further, the brief is not “so obviously in a long line of explicit church teaching.” I will address Winters’s comments on this point in a separate post.

2000—In dissent in Rucker v. Davis, Ninth Circuit judge William A. Fletcher (and son of fellow Ninth Circuit judge Betty B. Fletcher) opines that a local public housing agency may not evict a tenant on the basis of drug-related criminal activity engaged in by a household member if the tenant is not aware of the criminal activity. Never mind that the lease provision required by governing law provided that “any drug-related criminal activity on or near such premises, engaged in by a public housing tenant [or] any member of the tenant’s household … shall be cause for termination of tenancy.” According to Judge Fletcher, the categorical express language of the lease provision was “silent” as to “innocent tenants”. Well, yes, it was “silent” only in the sense that they were not specifically addressed since they plainly fell within the broader language.

The Ninth Circuit, insistent on being the Ninth Circuit, grants rehearing en banc and by a vote of 7 to 4 (with all members of the majority being, surprise!, Carter and Clinton appointees) embraces Judge Fletcher’s position.

Alas for Judge Fletcher, the Supreme Court grants review and, in a unanimous opinion issued in 2002—a mere five weeks after oral argument—rules that the statutory language “unambiguously requires” the very result that Judge Fletcher determined was prohibited. (The Supreme Court case is styled Department of Housing and Urban Development v. Rucker.)

The White House continues to nominate excellent nominees to fill the ever-increasing number judicial vacancies. Yesterday, President Trump announced his intent to nominate an eleventh wave of judicial nominees, which includes Court of Appeals nominees Andrew Oldham (Fifth Circuit), Michael Scudder (Seventh Circuit), Amy St. Eve (Seventh Circuit), and Mark Bennett (Ninth Circuit).

As the Democratic minority continues its unprecedented insistence on time-consuming cloture votes for nominees—including the numerous judicial nominees who have been reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously—the number of judicial nominees awaiting full Senate confirmation votes continues to tick up: presently there are 29 judicial nominees awaiting floor votes. Given that cloture requires 30 hours of debate time for each nominee, the Senate would have to work continuously all day and night for over 36 days straight in order to process all of the pending nominees.

Here is this week’s full update on federal judicial nominations.

Current and known future vacancies: 176

Courts of Appeals: 23

District/Specialty Courts*: 153

Pending nominees for current and known future vacancies: 53

Courts of Appeals: 4

District/Specialty Courts: 49

* Includes the Court of Federal Claims and the International Trade Court

2007—A Ninth Circuit panel rules (in Phillips v. Hust) that a prison librarian violated the constitutional rights of a prisoner, and is liable for damages to him, for failing to provide him timely access to a comb-binding machine that he wanted to use to bind his certiorari petition to the Supreme Court. Never mind, as Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain points out in dissent, that Supreme Court rules for ordinary letter-size submissions require stapling or binding in the upper left-hand corner (rather than comb-binding along the left margin). As O’Scannlain observes:

Unfortunately, rather than adhering to the clear limits established by Supreme Court precedent, the majority here mandates prison employees to anticipate when the denial of unnecessary services will so fluster an inmate that his filing, though in no way actually frustrated, might be delayed. Such a rule amounts to an unreasonable demand that prison librarians be not only experts on their actual duties, but also clairvoyant.

Ten judges will dissent from the Ninth Circuit’s decision to deny rehearing en banc. Ultimately, after the Supreme Court GVRs (grants review of, vacates the ruling in, and remands) the case, Judge O’Scannlain will write a new panel opinion in 2009 that rules that the prison librarian is entitled to qualified immunity.

I have a busy schedule of engagements this winter and spring. Most relate to Scalia Speaks (the highly acclaimed, and New York Times bestselling, collection of Justice Scalia’s speeches that I’ve co-edited).

I’m posting my current schedule here for two reasons: first, to answer the many inquiries I’m receiving about upcoming Scalia Speaks events; and second, in case you’re interested in arranging an event with me on Scalia Speaks, judicial nominations, or any other topic, to invite you to explore working that into my existing out-of-town trips.

I’ll note that I’ve recently been invited by a leading D.C. law firm to discuss Scalia Speaks at a firm-wide lunch. If there are other D.C. law firms that would be interested in lunches like this, either now or when you have summer associates around, please let me know. I’ll favor invitations that promise strong attendance.

Today President Trump announced his eleventh wave of judicial nominees since his Inauguration, which includes nominees to the Fifth Circuit, Seventh Circuit and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal. Below are the links to the bios of these new nominees; I look forward to seeing them move through the confirmation process.